Random Ray - 1999 Topps Gallery

I was always a big fan of the Topps Gallery cards in the 1990s. 

Good looking set with nice inserts.  

Here is the front of the 1999 Topps Gallery Ray Lankford card.  

The texture on the front of the card is really neat, but unfortunately lost on the scan. It's printed on card stock, but has sort of a canvas feel to it. Definitely a unique feel to the card when you pick it up. Previous renditions of this product had a frame design around the edge of the card, which allowed for a bigger player picture, but I like the white edges with the hazy, colored border around the photo.  

The base cards all had an action picture. Here we have Lankford looking in towards home plate as he is running. It's likely a hit and run, but we will get that on the back of the card. Ray had good speed until the end of his career when his knees got a little gimpy. Even after he moved to left field and stopped stealing bases, Ray was still a good base runner.  

Definitely an old cookie cutter stadium here with the astroturf and baggie, likely covering up football seating, behind the outfield wall. Leaning Philadelphia. 

Back of the card.  

I am not big on busy card backs, but this one actually works for me.  

I like the picture at the top. Easily the highlight of the back. A little curious as to what is going on in the picture. Guessing that Ray is looking for a ball mark on the bat. Something you don't see everyday on a baseball card.

I also love the stat breakdown in the middle where you can see the player performance by month. Something different, impressed that they had on-base percentage on a baseball card pre-Moneyball.  Ray had a really good September in 1998.   

The bottom section is fine. I think I mentioned on a previous Random Ray post that the default Topps comment for the back of a Ray Lankford card was that he played football at a junior college and rushed for 1,000 yards. The Carl Nichols factoid appears frequently too, but he was a catcher, not an outfielder. Guess the editor was having an off day. I actually wish they had skipped this information and gone into more detail about the front picture under the Front Photo heading.  

Clearly, he's running on a hit and run. Who was hitting and where were the playing? Did they win? It was 1998, so McGwire probably hit a home run and they lost.